Newcastle sunk by Carew's missiles

Kevin Keegan, Mike Ashley, Dennis Wise, Tony Jimenez and Jeff Vetere, your boys took a hell of a beating. They didn't really. Newcastle just lost by three goals again to leave Keegan searching for his first win and the Toon Army wondering if 2008 will ever bring three points - but three of the goals were scored by a Norwegian.

The manner of the defeat, though, after Michael Owen had put Newcastle ahead after just four minutes, will cause a lot of concern on Tyneside. Principally because all Newcastle's old defensive failings came back to haunt them. Leaking goals was a fault Keegan was never able to correct at the club first time round, and all the signs here suggested that the paralysis at the back could be worse than ever. Villa hit four goals in what will be termed a second-half fight-back, though in truth once the first went in every bit of fight went out of Newcastle.

The biggest mystery of the afternoon, in fact, was why Villa were so poor in the first half. It did not help that Olof Mellberg clearly had his mind on Juventus, and Stilian Petrov gave the ball away so frequently he appeared to be auditioning for England, and once those two were substituted at the interval Villa improved immeasurably.

But with John Carew almost alone up front, supported only by the diminutive Shaun Maloney, Villa only threatened from set-pieces until manager Martin O'Neill changed things around. Even then Carew nearly scored just before the interval, when Newcastle allowed an Ashley Young free-kick to reach his head and had to be rescued by Shay Given's diving save. O'Neill said Newcastle deserved their interval lead, which was generous of him considering Joey Barton might have conceded a penalty when he handled Gareth Barry's shot in the area. The visitors certainly looked sharp when taking the lead, Owen's reactions to James Milner's telling cross catching Villa off guard, though the early promise proved illusory. Newcastle never looked much like scoring another, and Villa spent the rest of the first half laying ineff ective siege to Given's goal.

That changed in the second half as soon as Carew's strength was supplemented by Marlon Harewood's pace. The substitute had a chance almost straight from the kickoff as Villa suddenly looked serious about attacking, and within a couple of minutes they had their equaliser when Wilfred Bouma surprised everyone with a shot from the angle of the area that took a slight deflection and crept almost apologetically past Given and his equally wrong-footed defence. Two minutes after that Villa were in front courtesy of Young's well-fl ighted corner a nd Carew's uncanny ability to score with any part of his head.

All Villa seemed to have done was breathe on Newcastle and in the space of three minutes they had turned the game around. The result was never in doubt after that, and Villa's third goal merely exemplified why. Steve Harper, on for the injured Given, turned a shot from Craig Gardner round a post after Newcastle had failed to clear a corner. From the next corner, Newcastle failed to clear again and Harper made an even better save from Gardner. From the third corner, Villa had at least three chances to strike and Carew accepted the third, meeting Nicky Butt's attempted clearance with a fi rmer header of his own. All that remained was for Stephen Carr to handle under pressure from Carew and the striker to become the fi rst home player to score a hat-trick at Villa Park since 1995 with a thunderously struck penalty.

'We had to try and do something at half-time, ' O'Neill said. 'Once we got the equaliser it gave us the momentum to finish the job. '

The long wait for Keegan to turn up to say anything inevitably fuelled speculation that he might be in the washrooms composing his resignation letter. That turned out not to be the case, though when he finally emerged he was clearly struggling to contain his emotions. 'We're fragile at the moment,' he said. 'We need to get a club back at Newcastle as soon as possible, it's all got a little bit fragmented. We weren't playing Arsenal today, we scored first and we had a platform to win this game, so you could say we have run out of excuses.

'Maybe we were a bit unlucky with the fist goal, but it was how the players responded that was the big disappointment. The negatives just piled up. Carew and Harewood were bullying us by the end. I still think we've got enough to be in the Premier League next season, but this is a tough league and we've got some tough games coming up. It doesn't matter how big you are, you've got to get to around 40 points. Those are facts.'

Manchester United, Blackburn and Liverpool are Newcastle's next three opponents, but that's not the bad news. Keegan has seen 10 goals conceded in his three away matches (a 3-3-4 formation) but that's not the bad news either.

Or Nigel Pearson walking out on the club on Friday. The bad news is that the last team Newcastle beat, back in December, was Fulham. And last week Fulham beat Aston Villa.

Man of the match

Marlon Harewood was arguably the game-breaker, though it is hard to argue with Carew, the scorer of the first home hat-trick by a Villa player in 13 years. He scored his first goal with his ear, too, or the back of his head. Not even Savo Milosevic, Villa's last hat-trick hero, could do that.

THE FANS' PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT

Mark Rutter, Observer reader

It was a tale of two halves, with a Jekyll and Hyde performance. Newcastle were there for the taking, with Keegan looking clueless, but it was the worst first half we've played this season. Petrov is just not imposing himself - it would be good for Routledge to get fit to see if he can replace him - and with Mellberg we were going long?ball to Carew all the time. In the second half we actually passed the ball up to Carew and he got a deserved hat-trick. Harewood made a difference, while Bouma is a quality left-back, one of the best in the division with Evra and Clichy. Young was very subdued on the left in the first half, but caused more trouble on the right. Now we need to finish in the top six so we can push on next season.

Steve Parish, NUFC-London.com Villa just came out a different team after half time, with two changes, and put Newcastle under pressure. It's been shown several times that a team without confidence make mistakes and Villa capitalised on that. There was no one on the back post for the corner from which they scored their second. We had done well for about 40 minutes in the first half, but we didn't have anyone in midfield with vision - they came at us with pace on the break, and we couldn't do the same. Owen had his best game of the season, but he can't do it all and Smith is not the right foil for him. We're now starting to look nervously downwards not upwards, and next up is Manchester United at home.